


stay in the shadows

by sunshine_states



Series: Triptych [1]
Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo, Winternight Series - Katherine Arden
Genre: Gen, some characters are dead but that's not going to stop them, spoilers for Winter of the Witch and King of Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-03-06 23:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18861307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshine_states/pseuds/sunshine_states
Summary: As usual, good intentions are not enough.





	1. ilya

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [no darkness but ignorance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17653052) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



> A reworking of something I posted under my old account, because I liked the idea and wanted to revisit it. Title from "Burn The Witch" by Radiohead.

Ilya grows up in a house by a lake, with a mother who conjures fire and a father who commands the winter gales. He is almost certain he was an accident, but that hardly matters when his father tucks him in, pale hands awkward over the covers in the way of one who is unused to such familial tenderness; it means nothing in the face of his mother’s fierce smile or his cousin Masha’s laugh. His mother is a witch, and his father is a demon, and it matters not if he himself is fey and strange; he is in good company.

 

His father teaches him to carve swans and firebirds from morsels of wood and to heal wounds with a touch. His mother teaches him to call fire to his hand with a thought, to fight with a sword made of enchanted ice, to travel from realm to realm by midnight. His sharp-toothed, smiling uncle teaches him all the forbidden magics that his parents would frown on. For the first fifteen years of his life, these things are enough.

 

His cousin Masha comes home one twilight when Ilya is seventeen. She grins at him as she swings off her horse, and Ilya has an armful of excited traveler.

 

“You grew,” she says. “I was worried that you would stay tiny and scowling for your entire life.”

 

He frowns at her. She laughs.

 

“Yes, like that!”

 

“I have missed you very much, Masha,” he says wearily.

 

“And I you,” she says, with a gentle slap of his shoulder. “I have been traveling for months now; it is good to see a familiar face.”

 

“Mama will want to see you,” Ilya says, nodding toward the door of the house. Masha catches his wrist as he begins to turn away. “What?”

 

“My friends have been talking, Ilyusha,” his cousin says. “They tell me you go somewhere even they cannot follow.”

 

Ilya stares at her, mouth suddenly very dry.

 

“Where have you been going?”

 

“That’s my affair,” he says, trying not to tremble under her assessing gaze. His cousin has inherited some of Mama’s ferocity, and he dislikes it. “I am like you, Masha – I go where I go.”

 

“I have never heard of an entire realm being hidden,” Masha says. “Unless – Ilya. Ilya, that is _too much_ magic.”

 

He jerks his wrist out of her grip. "I know the risks."

 

“Do you?” Masha looks very alarmed now. “The risk is  _madness_ , little cousin. Is that the price you are willing to pay for power?”

 

If he is powerful, then who can say he is mad? His uncle is mad. The first witch of the wood was mad. Some say that his mother is mad, too.

 

“I _am_ being careful,” he says again. “Don’t – don’t tell them. Not yet.”

 

“Not _yet_ ,” Masha says. “What are you planning?”

 

“I will tell you when I am ready,” he promises. “All of you. Truly, Masha.”

 

“All right,” Masha says slowly. “But if you do not tell them soon, Ilya, _I_ will.”

 

She keeps sending him little worried looks all through supper. His parents must notice, but they know better by now than to pry secrets out of either one of them. He will tell them soon, he swears, as he listens to Masha regale them with tales of her adventures. He will tell them, and they will be _so_ proud of his idea.

 

It takes him two weeks to slip away, but at last his parents pay a visit to his aunt. He stays behind, claiming to be too tired to make the journey, and waits until they are gone before springing up and throwing on his traveling clothes. He emerges into the starlit meadows of Ravka with a sigh that is as much excitement as relief.

 

“You came back,” someone calls, shrill with excitement, and he turns to see Katya running towards him. She skids to a halt a short distance away, going a little pink.

 

“I told them you’d be back," she says, more quietly.

 

Ilya smiles at her. It’s easy to smile at Katya. “I always keep my word."

 

“I believed you!” She’s fussing her her hair now, tucking one pale strand behind her ear and watching him through her lashes. “But–why? May I ask? I don’t know why.”

 

She’s acting very strange, he thinks. But that is of less concern than the idea that he’s held close to his chest for the last six months, the idea that first came to him when he saw that Ravka had witches but no one to protect them. His mother has stood against wayward demons and immortal sorcerer-kings; his father has defended their people against the forces of chaos time and time again. Even Masha and his uncle have won victories and titles for themselves. But Ilya is only Ilya.

 

Not anymore.

 

“Katya,” he says. “You and I are going to change the world.”


	2. aleksander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Darkling receives a visitor in the cells.

The Darkling wakes to the sound of the wind battering the stones of the prison and the ache of his bound hands. He was dreaming about –winter, perhaps. A white blizzard with a man’s voice. He sits up, rolling his shoulders experimentally to relieve some of the stiffness of sleep. His guards are slumped against the far wall, and a creature of shadow is watching him through the bars of his cell.

 

 _Nichevo'ya,_ he thinks first. But this creature with her moonlit hair and starry eyes is not that. She is, he realizes with a sense of deep unease, far more beautiful than any servant he has crafted from shadow. Her lips curl upwards in chilly amusement, watching him.

 

“To whom to I owe the pleasure?” he asks, as if such beings visit him with regularity. “Or what?”

 

The woman laughs unkindly. The shadows in the corner of the cell, driven back by torchlight, leap out and crawl along the walls. The Darkling holds himself still with an effort; there is something wrong about seeing his shadows commanded by another; the black pits in his mother’s face. _Know that I loved you._ Alina driving the dagger into his heart.

 

“So courteous,” the monster says. Her voice is mocking, but her eyes – those trace his face as though it were a book. “I have had this conversation before, you know.”

 

“Really? Forgive my forgetfulness, then.”

 

“Not with you,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Although it is not surprising that you rate yourself so highly. It was ever thus with your line.”

 

“You knew my family?” he says. He is not sure what emotion this is; rage, terror, excitement. He keeps it out of his voice, regardless.

 

The midnight-creature looks amused. “I am not bound to answer _your_ questions, boy.”

 

The Darkling grinds his teeth.

 

“Then whose,” he bites out. “ _Are_ you bound to answer?”

 

“The more one knows, the sooner one grows old,” she sing-songs.

 

He imagines forming a blade of shadow and slicing her smirking face in two. But perhaps it wouldn’t do any good. It might only make her laugh again. _Like calls to like._

 

She sighs theatrically. “Such anger. Truly, you are _very_ young.”

 

“I am not young,” he says.

 

“I had seen a thousand lives of men come and go before you drew your first breath,” she tells him. “Call yourself _immortal_? You only live longer than other men. That is not the same as eternity.”

 

He sits there, seething, frightened. Wild magic has ever been his to command. Even at his most powerless, he knew what he faced. This–the woman, the darkness, the shadows curling up the walls – this is something new. He will cut away the mystery until the truth is revealed to him, and then he will make use of the creature and her mysterious loyalties. It’s what he does best.

 

“Do you imagine that you have any control over this?” the woman says. She tilts her head, considering him as a falcon might a mouse. “Oh, you _do._ Silly child. You _are_ one of them.”

 

“You’ve never told me your name,” the Darkling says. _One of who_ , he does not say. She so clearly wants him to ask.

 

“I am a story,” the woman says. “It is not my fault if your people never bothered to tell it.”

 

“Why are you here?”

 

“To look at you,” she says simply. “And lo! I have looked, and I am not impressed.”

 

She is fading back into the general gloom of the prison. The Darkling struggles to his feet, furious.

 

“You haven’t answered my questions,” he says. If his wrists were unbound, he would drown them both in darkness. And even that might not faze a monster made of midnight.

 

“I need not tell you anything, Aleksander Shadowbringer,” she says, suddenly cold. “Little sorcerer playing at magic he scarcely understands. Little thief of lives.”

 

“I am more than you could ever imagine,” he says.

 

She laughs again. 

 

“A little boy stepping on anthills may pretend that he is a giant,” she says. "You shame us all with your boasting."

 

He lunges at her, heedless of his bound hands. But she is gone, and he hits the bars with a rattle that wakes his guards.

 

“Stay back,” the Heartrender snarls, blinking sleep from her eyes.

 

He hisses at her. She grins, bright and bloodthirsty, and his heart spasms in his chest. He hits the floor with an involuntary gasp.

 

“Stay down,” the other Heartrender says, unimpressed. He is little more than a burly silhouette backlit by torchlight. Tolya, the Darkling remembers. Tolya Yul-Bataar and his smirking sister, set to watch him by dear Zoya. There was a strange light in her eyes when she threatened him last, and he realized with unease that she knew something that he did not.

 

_Little sorcerer playing at magic he scarcely understands._

 

 _Well, then,_ he thinks. His chest hurts but he is smiling. He has always done his best work when his back is against the wall. _Let me learn._


	3. mal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mal has an unusual family reunion.

The children have acquired what Mal at first thinks is an imaginary friend.

 

In his defense, they do this a lot. One or another of their little gremlins is always inventing friendly mermaids or talking whisk brooms or even, memorably, a frog that they all insisted was actually an enchanted princess. So when Nadya tells him about the green-eyed witch queen who lives in Midnight and rides a horse that is actually a nightingale, he just laughs, ruffles her hair, and hands her another apple slice.

 

Of course the kids latch onto this shiny new story. Oleg trots into the kitchen one afternoon trailing mud and claiming that he slipped and fell into the creek but the witch pulled him out.

 

“Witch isn’t a nice word,” Mal reminds him gently.

 

Oleg shrugs. “She said she was a witch, though.”

 

“Go clean up,” Mal says, for lack of any better reply. “We’ll talk about this when you don’t look like a bolotnik.”

 

Oleg grins. “She says she met one of those! He tried to eat her, but she said no.”

 

“Good for her,” Mal says. “Go clean up.”

 

“Should we be worried?” he asks Alina that night.

 

Alina hums. There’s paint under her nails from the afternoon’s art class. Yulia made a picture of a princess in a tower and a forest and a winter-king, “for the witch.” Misha glowered and said there wasn’t any witch, and Yulia informed him, with the withering disdain unique to seven-year olds, that he was only saying that because he wasn’t Grisha.

 

“You mean, should we be worried that there’s an actual witch?” she says. “I went out after lunch with Alyosha and Igor. We searched the whole grounds. No sign of anyone who shouldn’t be there.”

 

“Could she be–” Mal feels stupid even saying this. “You know, a ghost?”

 

Alina raises her eyebrows. “You mean like we used to be?”

 

“I mean an actual ghost.”

 

“If the dead can walk, then we should _all_ be worried, probably,” Alina says, trying to sound careless, and Mal knows she’s thinking of the Darkling. He comes closer, wraps an arm around her waist. “I mean, can you imagine? Ana Kuya would die twice if she saw what we’ve done with the place.”

 

Mal kisses the curve of her neck. “We should get a dog.”

 

“A dog?”

 

“A big dog. To bark at witch ghosts.”

 

Alina grins. “Oleg’s been pretending to be a horse for the past two days. Maybe we can get him to switch careers.”

 

“I like the way you think.”

 

Bantering with Alina is one of the few things that hasn’t changed with the years. Curled around her in their shared bed, listening to her slow, deep breathing and the wind rattling the windows, Mal drifts off.

 

He dreams of a blizzard such as they had on the border. He is walking side by side with a woman–or a girl, it's hard to tell. Her hair goes from black to silver to black again. She has crow's feet and then she doesn't. When she reaches for his hand, he does not remember to pull away. Her fingers are warm, and her eyes are as green as the ocean.

 

“Mal,” she says.

 

There’s a nightingale perched on her shoulder. A jewel around her neck the same color as her eyes. Mal thinks he’s fallen into a fairytale.

 

“You’re not real,” he says.

 

Her smile–Mal thinks of the Darkling creating shadow soldiers in the little rented room in Novyi Zem.  It’s the same hunger. The same wild joy. For the first time, he’s afraid.

 

“As real as you are,” she says. “Mal. Malyen. We never stopped looking.”

 

Mal glances around them, but there’s nothing but snow for miles around. “We?”

 

“Yes,” says someone else. A clear, sharp voice, at once new and _horrifyingly_ familiar. “We.”

 

The woman must see the expression on his face. Her grip on his hand tightens. “No, wait–!”

 

But Mal is already flailing himself into wakefulness. Alina makes an irritable noise and turns over.

 

“Bad dream?” she mumbles, patting him with a clumsy hand.

 

“Yeah,” Mal says. He’s finding it kind of hard to breathe. “Something like that.”

 

She nods. They both have their share of bad dreams, these days. “Want to talk about it?”

 

The witch, looking at him as though he were an answer she never hoped to find. That _voice_. He shakes his head. Alina nods again and throws an arm around his waist.

 

“Get some sleep,” she says. “‘S better in the morning.”

 

He obediently closes his eyes. Gradually, her breathing slows again and the arm draped over his middle goes lax. He nuzzles her forehead lightly, wide awake. It's high summer in Ravka, but he could swear that he smells cold water and pine.

 


	4. ulla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody has ever truly wanted Ulla.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I…forgot there was another potential Morozova floating around. Sorry, scary mermaid lady.

This one is strangely impressive. Old, yes, but her face has dignity. Her eyes, dark and searching, put Ulla in mind of one of her kin. And she shows no fear standing here before her, which shows that she is either very brave or very foolish.

 

Likely both.

 

“You know who I am,” Ulla says.

 

The old woman _smiles_ , and for a moment so resembles Aleksander that Ulla’s heart thuds in her chest. “I do.”

 

“You want something,” Ulla says, recovering. “A desperate wish? You _must_ be desperate, to come to me.”

 

This time, the woman only looks sad. Good. “I am.”

 

“Tell me your sorrows, _babushka_ ,” Ulla purrs, leaning in. “Tell me how I might wash them away.”

 

“You do not need to put on a performance,” the old woman says, a little waspishly. She seats herself on the damp floor of the cave, arranging her traveling cloak. She dresses as Ravkan warriors used to before Ulla was even born, and there are stylized waves embroidered on her sleeves. When she meets Ulla’s gaze, there is again that half-mad smile of hers, and a hint of something in her wrinkled face that Ulla recognizes as _hope_. “I would have told you regardless.”

 

“So,” Ulla says. “Tell me.”

 

The old woman sighs; between her hands, gripped like a holy relic, is a sea-green stone strung on a ragged cord.

 

“If _that_ is your trade,” Ulla says, nodding to it, “it is not enough.”

 

“I wouldn’t trade this for all the empires that ever were,” the old woman says. “Now, hush. You wanted to know what I want.”

 

Ulla presses her lips together tightly and nods. She _will_ be paying the impertinent hag for that later.

 

“Once,” the old woman says. “There was a brave warrior and a demon-king, and their child was the best and the worst of them both. He was loved by everyone who knew him. He could carve wood and cast spells, and even, I have heard, raise the dead. But he was not content; he wanted to be a hero like his parents. And, I think, he forgot to be careful. He thought himself strong enough to resist the lure of power, and so he did not even notice when his good intentions led him astray. He was lost to us, and for all our hunting we never found him. But he married. He must have, for he has three descendants now.”

 

The old woman shrugs her shoulders.

 

“ _That_ is what I want. To bring my family home. And so, I am here.”

 

Ulla scoffs. The story is fantastical, but that matters less than the sentimental absurdity of the request. “You think I can bring back your family? I grant wishes, yes. But if you are looking for a family reunion, you have come to the wrong place.”

 

“No,” the old woman says, and again she smiles. “My name is Marya Vladmirovna. And you, Ulla of the sildroher, are granddaughter of my cousin Ilya. _You_ are the one I want. Name your price. I will pay it, if it only means you come back with me.”

 

Ulla cannot absorb the words. She _hears_ them. She does. But–

 

“You – you can’t mean me,” she says, and hates the plaintive note in her voice. An echo of the trusting, stupid girl she’d been before Signy and Roffe. “You _can’t_.”

 

Marya Vladmirovna doesn’t smile again, but there is a light in her eyes as if she means to do battle here in this very cave.

 

“ _Can’t_?” she asks. “I _do_. I have crossed three times nine realms to find you, cousin. I know my purpose here.”

 

Hope is poison. Love, too. The only magic worth having is paid for in blood. But when Marya Vladmirovna reaches out a hand, Ulla takes it.

 


	5. medved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is something about Mila Jandersdat.

As far as anyone knows, the lean, wary Shu woman is a wealthy merchant, and the one-eyed man who hovers at her shoulder is nobody at all. There are few in the realms now who can see the Bear, and fewer still within the Ice Court. What there _is_ , though, is a veritable banquet of fear, and by the time the bells toll for midnight, he is as sleek and satisfied as a cat that has gorged itself on mice.

 

Senya watches him with half an eye, and he watches her watch him. Vasilisa Maryanovna is his favorite great-niece, although neither of them will ever admit as much. She is her twin’s pale, gray-eyed shadow, but he sees her. One predator recognizes another.

 

She is scheming now. He sees it in the minute tick of her jaw. Her fingers curl around her delicate glass of aqvavit so tightly that it creaks.

 

They knew, going in, that the Fjerdans burned their witches. What neither of them had expected was the banner. Senya went white with fury at the sight. The Bear only found it distasteful. Well enough to destroy your enemies, but a _quilt_ , really.

 

“You could make him burn,” he suggests. Senya twitches a little and takes a fortifying sip of her drink. Across the room, Jarl Brum chats with a stout young woman in blue, blissfully unaware how close he is to being struck by lightning. “ _I_ would not tell your mother.”

 

Senya narrows her eyes. “No.”

 

He sighs. “And where is the fun in that?”

 

“If he dies now,” Senya says, “this whole place will be in an uproar. Innocent people will be caught up in the witch-hunt, and at least some of them will die.”

 

The Bear makes a dismissive noise. Unfortunately for her, Senya was also very close to Vasya and his brother. Morozko became positively saintly in his declining years, riding about the world with Vasya on errands of mercy and giving fur-lined boots to children. The twins adored them, and – he has no use for this memory. His brother is dead. Vasilisa Petrovna is dead. Even his art cannot raise them again.

 

“And,” Senya adds, a welcome interruption to this maudlin line of thought, “he deserves a trial.”

 

“A _trial_ ,” the Bear sneers. “The way his prisoners were given a _trial_?”

 

She doesn’t answer. Vasya was nearly burned in Moscow, and Marya barely escaped a pyre in Pskov. The Bear knows that Senya wants to crush the Ice Court beneath her heel. He wishes that she _would_. The Ice Court is exactly the kind of splendor that the Bear would like to smash into pieces.

But he is already bored with this conversation. The girl talking to Jarl Brum has caught his attention.

 

“That’s Mila Jandersdat,” his niece says, following his gaze. “She’s a widow.”

 

And Jarl Brum seems _very_ interested. “His mistress?”

 

“No. She tutors his daughter, I think.”

 

Mila Jandersdat is as timid as a mouse. Mila Jandersdat wears her yellow hair in a crown of ladylike braids, and her fair neck unadorned of jewels. Mila Jandersdat is a tree nourished on the black, fathomless waters of death, and the Bear is _fascinated_.

 

“She’s not who she says she is,” Senya remarks around a mouthful of pickled herring.

“No,” the Bear agrees. “She is _much_ more.”

 

Senya shoots him a sharp glance. Those strange gray eyes of hers; they make him think of the monk. “Medved.”

 

He smiles at her innocently. “What harm can an old beast do?”

 

“A great deal,” Senya snipes back. Once he had given her a rosebush. It seemed an ordinary enough gift at first, but of course it kept growing, sprouting thorns as long as her arm and flowers so nauseatingly fragrant that they drowned out every other smell at the lakeside. Eventually Marya lost her temper and set fire to the entire plant.

 

Vasya laughed herself sick. That recollection aches in a way he decides not to investigate further. He hands Senya his drink. “Excuse me.”

 

“What are you doing,” Senya says.

 

He flashes sharp teeth at her. If anyone cared to look - if anyone expected to find a spirit of chaos in their midst - they would see that his shadow is a vast and living thing. A bear where a man’s should be. He walks unseen between Fjerdan notables, feeling warm with the promise of violence to come.

 

A girl holding death in her fingertips, wearing a face that is not her own, smiling with venom at her benefactors. If he cannot make Senya destroy this glittering prison, then Mila Jandersdat will have to do.

 


End file.
